Many networked applications require bidirectional communication. Using one or more of these applications, a device may transmit data in one direction while receiving data in the other direction. For example, a wireless communication device (WCD) with data capabilities may transmit a request for data to a networked server. This request flows in what is called the “reverse direction,” and may reach the web server via a radio access network (RAN). The WCD may receive the requested data from the networked server also via the RAN. The requested data flows in what is called the “forward direction.”
In many such transactions, the amount of data that the RAN transmits in the forward direction is far greater than the amount of data that the WCD transmits in the reverse direction. For example, a typical request for a web page is a relatively short message, consisting of as little as a few tens of bytes of data. However, the requested web page may consist of a megabyte of data or more. Some wireless communication technologies have been implicitly or explicitly designed to support applications that require more forward direction capacity than reverse direction capacity. For example, code division multiple access technologies tend to support higher maximum data rates from a RAN to a WCD than from the WCD to the RAN.
However, not all applications exhibit this typical behavior. Some applications may make heavier use of the reverse direction than the forward direction. Examples of this type of application include, but are not limited to, file transfer applications and file sharing applications.